By Patricia H. Kushlis
It’s bad enough to have a totally incompetent political ambassador assigned to head the US Embassy in Luxembourg. This is also not the first time. Two retiree friends of mine were sent out to that same mission a decade ago because the campaign money-bundling titular head at the time couldn’t hack the cushy position either.
Neither the State Department nor Hillary can be blamed for making the latest screw-up appointment – that fault lies squarely with the White House and its apparent need to reward Cynthia Stroum, a particularly assiduous campaign contributor, with a mini-palace in Old Europe’s medieval heart.
I’ve written about the campaign bungler –oops bundler - problem during the George W. Bush administration. Looks like it's time to unearth that post from our WV archives along with my primer for political ambassadors wishing to remain ensconced in their comfortable mansions complete with household staff, and car and driver for the duration of their three year appointment abroad at taxpayer expense.
The State Department can and should be blamed, however, for assigning as public affairs officer an unqualified – and painfully incompetent consular coned foreign service officer with only two stints under her belt – neither in public diplomacy - before being sent to head the albeit miniscule public affairs office at American Embassy Luxembourg.
Now a program the size of Luxembourg’s should not be a difficult task to undertake. That is, if the person assigned has the requisite experience and is given authority to run a small, but multi-faceted show. Obviously, from the recent Inspector General’s report, the PAO had neither the experience nor the authority so it’s no wonder the program is a mess. Then add in an abusive and demanding Ambassador to boot.
Recipe for disaster.
According to the inspectors, a public diplomacy strategic planning document – which had been left by a predecessor – was in rough form at best. (Note: such documents crucial for well functioning public diplomacy disappeared after the destruction of USIS in 1999 only to resurface near the beginning of the Obama administration). The strategic planning document in Luxembourg such as it is, was ignored by the current PAO, according to the Inspectors. No surprises – given the circumstances.
It also obviously didn’t matter very much.
In a way, that only makes sense since the program outlined in the OIG report is way too complex for a small post like Luxembourg with only 1 ½ locally engaged staff to run well.
As a former USIS officer who served as both cultural and information officers here are a few unsolicited recommendations:
- First, until and unless the Department is willing to increase the size and expertise of the public diplomacy staff in Luxembourg, the goal should be to right size responsibilities so that those that are undertaken reflect positively on the US image and make sense in terms of the Embassy’s priorities and staffing.
I think the OIG is out of line proposing that the public affairs office not only handle the Ambassador’s excessively long daily media briefing but also write a summary of it for Washington consumption. Where I served, the Ambassador’s media brief was done by the political section staff while public affairs (aka USIS) filed the daily media reaction.
Back then media reaction had a wide high-level interagency readership. It focused on a few priority topics identified by Washington and it was filed through our own intranet within an hour or two of opening of business. For a small, well run country, those topics usually had little to do with local politics or economics – but the latter are often the focus of briefings for an Ambassador. The same staff cannot do both simultaneously. These people simply cannot balance on a tight rope and chew gum at the same time.
- Second, I would return the management of the Fulbright Program to Brussels. Fulbright programs are complex. It takes a good year to know how to handle one well and blessed are the posts that have excellent Fulbright Commissions. The Belgian-US binational commission has had a stellar reputation for years. Let that Commission take on Luxembourg as well (this was the case when I headed the European Academic Exchanges Branch in the early 1990s and it worked just fine).
The US Embassy in Luxembourg, however, could and should host an annual Ambassadorial event or two for American Fulbrighters and their counterparts. This would connect Embassy officers and staff with the Fulbrighters, give the program the official honor it deserves as well as help fulfill the building-exchange-networks requirements commented upon as needed in the Inspection Report.
- Third, I have to wonder how a person so harried as this inexperienced PAO could even think about a country plan – or whatever it’s called now – let alone revise and implement one. This PAO did not write the document now in the files. She couldn’t know the first thing about implementing it either. Nor does she have time to do so. The contents of the document need to be pared down to functions that can work for a small staff at a small embassy. This should be done under the guidance of an experienced Foreign Service public affairs officer.
- Fourth, the OIG criticizes the PAO for sloppy record keeping regarding grants – but what grants and to what purpose? Come on, the woman had only been there for four months and never done any of this before. Moreover, how is she supposed to undertake all the inside administrative stuff as well as do what she should be doing, e.g. meeting and interacting with the movers and shakers in Luxembourg’s educational, cultural and media circles.
Where’s the Executive Officer or even, an administrative secretary to back up administrative matters. And don’t think a State management section is going to give the PAO the help she needs: the priorities are elsewhere. Apparently those priorities at US Embassy Luxembourg - until very recently at least - focused entirely on the now former Ambassador’s bed, cook and gardener.
If all this means that the Embassy foregoes what should be a low priority little yellow school bus tour of local high schools dreamt up by a neophyte Ambassador, then so be it.
If the PAO had a full time cultural affairs assistant to take on the logistics of such a trip, then OK. But if not, someone – and it should be Washington given the frequent turnover of DCMs – should have taken the Ambassador aside and told her what public diplomacy priorities need to be. That this apparently didn’t happen makes me wonder what role the Bureau of European Affairs played, or didn’t play, in this affair.
Believe me, I’m not “anti-youth” but for me youth means exchanges, centers, the Internet, contact with younger members of the mission and with visiting American youth groups. Not an Ambassador cavorting about the country in a yellow school bus. Whoops, almost wrote yellow submarine. But then Luxembourg is not on the sea.
- Then there’s the problem of maintaining a web presence – also identified as lacking in the OIG report. The care and feeding of blogs, web pages and other social media are, believe me, time-consuming. The post’s webpage was criticized by the OIG for not 1) being kept up-to-date; and 2) not well used by viewers. The two, of course, are entwined and the task is about to become more time consuming for small posts, if I understand the latest IIP reorganization correctly.
But this is all supposed to be done – along with keeping up the embassy’s internet and intranet page – by a lone LES press assistant torn in numerous directions at the same time.
Last Friday, my colleague Patricia Sharpe wrote a scathing commentary about an incompetent Consulate PAO in Hyderabad with foot in mouth syndrome. Yes, it’s different from the problems in Luxembourg – but both are symptoms of the same deficiency: poor human resources management in State.
When will State learn that not all FSOs can or should do public diplomacy – that pd is a special skill on its own and one that requires constant care and practice. These skills, my friends in Foggy Bottom and elsewhere, don’t just blossom over night.
Let’s face it though, this scathing OIG report should be read not just as an indictment of a political ambassador but also of a personnel and inspection system that need to straighten up and fly right. There is no reason that the officer in question should have been assigned to the public affairs position in the first place – sometimes nobody does less damage than a somebody who doesn’t know what she or he is doing. There, however, is equally no good reason for an inspection team to have added insult to injury by adding yet more marginal requirements to the tasks of an already distressed public affairs section. What were they thinking? Or not.
Please State – get it right for a change.